Square Enix has confirmed a western release for the recently announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 downloadable content.

The first of the content – new outfits – sees Serah slip into Beachwear and Noel suit up in his Spacetime Guardian outfit, given to him by the goddess Etro. They’ll be sold together for $2.99 / 240 Microsoft Points.

The second piece of content – dubbed ‘Sazh: Head or Tails?’ – is Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s first downloadable episode. Players will take control of Sazh, one of the main party members in Final Fantasy XIII, and venture into the Serendipity casino, where two new games, “Chronobind” and “Serendipity Poker,” are now playable. Once the episode is complete, Sazh can join Serah and Noel’s party. The package will sell for $4.99 / 400 Microsoft Points.

Serah's costume is "Resort Style" and Noel's costume is "Guardian of Time". Both costumes are the same price as all the previous DLCs. They will be available on Feb 21 2012.

The Sazh "story" DLC is an episode called "Heads or Tails" where you play as Sazh but it seems limited to just the Casino area. What the DLC actually does, is that it adds two card games to the Casino. After you complete the DLC scenario, Sazh apparently joins your party as well (???). This DLC is priced at twice the normal price, so expect it to be 6 bucks in the US (600yen in Japan, 400 MS Points). It will be available on Feb 28 2012. This DLC requires an upcoming patch to work, and the player must have the Casino available on the Historia Crux to play it.

If such a thing happened, it would be the International edition... and I'm not holding my breath for that to come out in western markets. I'm sure that "tradition" could end at any time, but so far they've gone 14 years without releasing a single International/Final Mix over here...

Huh? What are we talking about, joining the party or joining the paradigm deck?

If he joins the party in the sense that he can replace either noel/serah in the party, that might be pretty huge, especially if canon.

The preview just says "In addition, when you clear the DLC scenario, Sazh becomes an ally as well, so don't miss this!" In terms of language, it's the same thing they use to refer to how the boss DLCs can join your party when you beat them, so it's probably just a monster crystal thing. There's no functionality in FFXIII-2 to allow for you to swap out Serah and Noel.

This is the extent of the "story" DLC? I mean, that's actually a good thing because paying extra to complete a story is pants. This can be safely ignored.

This is the extent of this particular story DLC. I don't think it really represents what all their plans are for upcoming DLC. Clearly they don't regard Sazh as a very important or popular character who can completely sell a major game-driven DLC. Either that or they simply weren't interested in making one.

The "big" story DLC that they've been talking about for quite a while now is the Lightning one, which seems to be taking a while to develop.

This is the extent of this particular story DLC. I don't think it really represents what all their plans are for upcoming DLC. Clearly they don't regard Sazh as a very important or popular character who can completely sell a major game-driven DLC. Either that or they simply weren't interested in making one.

The "big" story DLC that they've been talking about for quite a while now is the Lightning one, which seems to be taking a while to develop.

Oh again.

Odds on the "big" story DLC actually being a decent value proposition? I don't know SE's track record with this stuff.

This is the extent of this particular story DLC. I don't think it really represents what all their plans are for upcoming DLC. Clearly they don't regard Sazh as a very important or popular character who can completely sell a major game-driven DLC. Either that or they simply weren't interested in making one.

The "big" story DLC that they've been talking about for quite a while now is the Lightning one, which seems to be taking a while to develop.

Yeah Toriyama is hyping that one up. I think he even said that it would explain the true meaning behind the game's ending

The gambling DLC gets relegated to Sazh... the only black man in the cast (and in the whole FF13 world except his son?) Maybe Square is not-to-subtly trying to say something, hahaha.

The amazing thing about Sazh is that he has a ton of design elements that could be called... questionable such as his 'fro, the chicken-like baby chocobo in his head, the dancing around like a boxer, the goofy "woah woah woah hell no!" antics from earlier in the first XIII, and now this whole gambling thing... yet despite all that he actually ends up being quite well written and not a stereotype at all, ultimately being one of the best characters in the game.